The Seven Thousand Steps

Upon my return to Whiterun, the Jarl Balgruuf shows me little gratitude, instead interrogating me about what happened. It's still a sensitive topic, and the guards have been talking about it the whole way back. I'm sure I was ahead of the group, but somehow everybody knows about it.

I explain what happened in as little detail as possible but and he seems more or less convinced. Apparently he also understood the strange words that thundered out across the plain earlier, and insists that I've been summoned by the Greybeards. I don't know how all this fits together, but I must admit he's very convincing. When I have a look on my map, however, it looks like a long walk.

It is a long walk, and that's just to reach the mountain. Balgruuf wasn't kidding when he said Seven Thousand Steps. It's not even an efficient path, it goes up and down and winds around, and it's badly maintained. Not much to encounter. An ice-wraith responds well to my Fear spell, and an Ice Wolf scares the septims out of me but is quickly calmed. The only major hurdle is the Frost Troll, who adamantly refuses any of my magical efforts to avoid conflict. In the end I'm forced summon a Flame Atronach and run away while they're both distracted. I really hate those things...

At the top of the path is an old fortress, apparently the home of the Greybeards. From up here I can see vast distance below and around me. I suppose if there was one place you'd stay to watch for somebody slaying dragons, this would be it.

Inside is featureless and badly lit, but I can see a mysterious, bearded man in a hood coming towards me. Then I notice identical men on either side of me... It's a convergence, clearly something is about to happen. Perhaps I'm about to find out what 'dough-farting' is...

The first man introduces himself as Arngeir and does a WHOLE lot of talking, somewhere in which I pick up that it's Dohvakiin, not 'dough-farting'. I'm not sure which makes more sense. Anyway, he's not convinced that I am Dohvakiin, or Dragonborn, so they insist on a demonstration. I'm not really comfortable with this, even less so when they teach me another word and my shout is even more aggressive. Seeing people stagger back from the apparent power of my voice is exactly the kind of direct assault I'm trying to avoid on this journey. At last they drop the matter, and teach me something more useful, a word which will propel me forward at a frightening speed.

The whole thing winds down and Arngeir assigns me a final task to prove myself. All the shouting and glowing was apparently insufficient. It seems I have to retrieve an old artifact, a horn, from, you guessed it, an old Nordic ruin. I'm suspicious that this horn is purely ceremonial and that they don't actually need it, but that pesky heroic nature of mine forces me to accept the task. I have a nasty feeling that things are going to escalate quickly from here though...